Policy —

National Broadband Plan arrives, quoting Shakespeare

The new National Broadband Plan arrived today, stuffed with goodies like …

When the federal government spends more than a year developing a 300+ page report on national broadband policy, perhaps the last thing one expects to find in it is a quote from Shakespeare's Henry IV.

As two rebels plot their assault on the English king, the Welsh leader Owen Glendower brags that he can "call spirits from the vasty deep." The English Hotspur retorts, "Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?"

Anyone can talk a good game about conjuring broadband policy from the vasty deep of the FCC—but can those people actually implement their visions? The National Broadband Plan, released today, drops this bit of Shakespeare on readers at the bottom of page 11 to make a simple point: this Plan is about the art of the possible.

Perhaps a better quote from Henry IV might be from the lips of the famous comic figure Falstaff: "The better part of valor is discretion."

Competition and pricing

The plan is stuffed to bursting with moderate goods and decent challenges—100Mbps Internet to 100 million homes by 2020, 1Gbps Internet to an "anchor institution" in every community, smart grid support, universal Internet service of at least 4Mbps, a national public safety network. Such changes are necessary, important, and politically possible; what they are not is transformative on the issue of price and competition.

Look at all the competition (source: FCC)

Less than a page into the executive summary, the FCC notes that the number one way it can influence broadband is by designing policies "to ensure robust competition." In the chapter defining these incredible competition-promoting policies, the FCC notes that wireline ISP competition in the US is "surely fragile" and that the data shows "only limited evidence of price competition among providers." The FCC also recognizes that cable is running away from DSL, and in many communities will soon be the only true high-speed option.

What's the solution? Forget the conjuring of spirits from any deep, vasty or otherwise; what we get is more data collection, the call for a new broadband speed label, and several future "reviews" of FCC policies on wholesale and special access rates. These could lead to real changes years down the road... or they might not. The Plan essentially punts on setting up any goals in these areas beyond "advancing competition"—as we knew it would after our interview with the Plan's chief architect, Blair Levin.

It was probably a wise move, in the sense that the Plan would have been savaged (it's already taking incoming fire) had it suggested anything less nebulous... such as the recommendations of its own commissioned report on the subject from Harvard. But the Plan won't have any effect on broadband competition and pricing for years, and it offers few aspirational goals in that direction.

Not surprisingly, this disappointed groups like Free Press. "While the FCC does take some important steps toward a new framework for competition policy, many of the critical questions are deferred for further review," they noted.

More interesting was last week's comment by FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who railed against recent ISP price hikes (PDF) and concluded, "When prices rise across the industry, and where there are only a limited number of players in the game, we have to ask ourselves whether there is any meaningful competition in the marketplace. Moreover, when executives from major broadband providers indicate that they will only roll out faster speeds in the few markets where they have competition, our fears about whether meaningful competition exists should grow. If we fail to think deeply about these issues, consumers will suffer, and low-income Americans in particular will be left long behind."

Clyburn's key concern was price; little in the National Broadband Plan even attempts to address that concern, but what's there looks good. We'll take a closer look at specific proposals over the next few days. For the moment, here's a high-level overview of the most intriguing ideas.

Inside the Plan

Get ready for taxes. One of the Plan's recommendations is that "the federal government should investigate establishing a national framework for digital goods and services taxation."

Open it up, cable providers. The FCC proposes that video providers be required to install a new "gateway" device in subscribers' homes. The gateway would output video in a standard form easily accessible by third-party devices in the home.

Nutrition labels for broadband. The Plan calls for a new rulemaking process to "determine performance disclosure requirements for broadband." In essence, the FCC wants a standardized label, much like those that appear on new car windows and on food products. According to a mockup of one proposed design included in the Plan, such a label would show the actual and advertised speeds of a broadband connection (in both directions) along with a "star rating" showing the quality of the connection.

Example broadband labels (source: FCC)

Municipal broadband. The FCC wants to "clarify the Congressional mandate allowing state and local entities to provide broadband in their communities and do so in ways that use public resources more effectively."

4Mbps for everyone! The Universal Service Fund currently subsidizes voice service across the US, ensuring that it is not too costly even in the middle of the driest desert. The Plan calls for transitioning this fund to a new Connect America Fund that will offer both broadband Internet and voice with "at least 4Mbps actual download speeds" to everyone.

3G for everyone! Much like the Connect America Fund, a new Mobility Fund will ensure that no Americans are left behind in the wireless market, either. The fund will "ensure no states are lagging significantly behind the national average for 3G wireless coverage."

National public safety network. As we have reported already, the FCC is pushing ahead with plans to build a mobile broadband network for public safety's use. This will take Congressional action, as the FCC estimates it will cost $6.5 billion over 10 years just to build the thing, with plenty more cash needed to keep it running.

100 million at 100Mbps. The number one long-term goal of the Plan is one we've mentioned before: getting 100Mbps access to at least 100 million US homes by 2020. This goal looks pretty easy to meet; it's no moon shot. According to the FCC's own chart (p. 20) Verizon's FiOS will pass 17 million homes by the end of this year. In addition, Comcast will pass 50 million with high-speed DOCSIS 3.0 service. Time Warner Cable, Cox, and Cablevision will also roll out DOCSIS 3.0 to millions more homes this year. In other words, by the end of 2010, the infrastructure for this 10-year goal will already be in place; all that remains is the (relatively simple) job of turning up the speed dial from 50Mbps to 100Mbps.

500MHz of new spectrum. The Plan calls for 500 MHz of newly available spectrum set aside just for wireless broadband. This should be available by 2020, but at least 300 MHz of this should be available by 2015.

Access to infrastructure. The Plan wants to make it easier for companies to run fiber and other infrastructure elements. It calls for "low and more uniform rental rates for access to poles," better management of rights-of-way, and a new policy that would only provide federal dollars for roads and bridges if those projects allow "joint deployment of broadband infrastructure." In other words, once the ground is dug up, cities and states should allow anyone who wants to lay ducting and fiber to come in and do so along the roadway.

1Gbps to every community. We've already seen the tremendous reaction to Google's announcement that it would build a 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home testbed in some US city. The FCC wants to make sure that every city has access to such a pipe, and it calls for 1Gbps to an "anchor institution" in every community (think schools, hospitals, government buildings).

Where we're going

The level of detail found in the plan is truly staggering. This is an ambitious document that certainly reflects well on those who drafted it. With the single (and important) caveat that it immediately does little for wireline Internet pricing, the Plan does a terrific job of making the case that broadband is not only important but essential. The document's first words are, "Broadband is the great infrastructure challenge of the early 21st century."

We noted above that the Plan is more evolutionary than transformative, but one could make the case that the large number of evolutionary steps in the Plan do add up to something more than the sum of their parts. Certainly, if the Plan is implemented in anything like its current form, telecommunications in the US will look hugely different a decade from now. The entire communication system will be IP-based; subsidized Internet access will be available everywhere; wireless companies will have far more spectrum; the government will have funded and will control its own national broadband network; high-speed fiber connections will permeate every community; ISPs will be more accurate about the service they're selling; and smart grid devices will make use of broadband to help cut America's energy use.

While the Plan does contain a few high-end recommendations, its emphasis is clearly on the low end of the market. That's not a criticism; it's where the government often looks to set minimum standards and basic access policies for every citizen. In this case, the Plan proposes a wholesale shift away from the telephone network of the past to a baseline level of 3G wireless coverage and a baseline level of home Internet access. Those are the things that matter now; the old public communications grid of phone service and over-the-air TV isn't in history's dustbin quite yet, but the trajectory is clear.

With the release of the National Broadband Plan, the US has turned a corner. The future is packet switched, it is open standards, and it is open networks. Look for deep dives on individual topics from Ars in the days ahead.